The Church of Scientology has a reputation for ruthlessly going after
its enemies. Robert Cipriano claims Scientologists rewarded him for
helping them do just that. Now he's turned on them

By Tony Ortega

Here's why you should be skeptical about what Graham Berry and Robert
Cipriano say about the Church of Scientology: Berry's been after the
church for years, and he makes no secret of his desire to litigate the
45-year-old organization to its knees. An eloquent, New Zealand-born
attorney who lives in Santa Monica, Berry has enjoyed his role as one
of the few attorneys who battles the controversial organization full-
time. That has gained Berry some notoriety, particularly with a loosely
knit online community of ex-Scientologists and free-speech advocates
who keep a close watch on all that pertains to Dianetics and
Scientology. Berry plays to that audience eagerly, posting his latest
motions and pleadings on the Internet nearly as quickly as he files
them in court.

For years, he's been known for brash court strategies meant not only to
take a bite out of the church but also to embarrass it publicly. To a
client, he once said: "My agenda is to bite Scientology in the butt and
to cause it as much grief as possible." He's also notorious for phone-
book-thick court documents filled with tales of conspiracy that reach
back to Scientology's 1954 founding by the late science-fiction writer
L. Ron Hubbard. Last year, Berry filed a 312-page complaint on behalf
of a former member of the church who claimed he'd been defrauded by
everyone from Scientologist actor John Travolta to President Bill
Clinton. In August, a judge declared Berry a vexatious litigant, a rare
penalty handed out to attorneys who tie up courts with frivolous
lawsuits.

Robert Cipriano, meanwhile, is an admitted liar who says that he
willingly committed perjury last year by lying in a deposition taken
under oath. A nervous, chameleonlike figure, Cipriano never seems to
stay in one place or situation very long. He spent five years living as
a gay man and now says he's straight. He was once a successful Park
Avenue businessman, but then couldn't hold a job. He was willing to
accept financial help for his perjured testimony but now claims to be
doing the righteous thing by speaking out about it. His own court-filed
declarations make him out to be something of a confused, pathetic loser
who is usually either running from a bad situation or running toward
someone who will give him a handout.

So it's not easy to believe such a man when he says he was at the
center of an elaborate conspiracy by the Church of Scientology to
destroy Graham Berry.

Cipriano says in court documents that five years ago he was duped by
Scientology operatives into making false claims that Berry is a
pedophile who bragged about having sex with boys as young as 12. Those
claims ended up on the Internet, and Cipriano says that Scientology,
which considers Berry a bitter enemy, contacted his colleagues,
clients, and friends about them. Last year, Cipriano says, he was
encouraged by Scientology attorneys to testify in a deposition about
his false claims and, when he agreed, Scientology rewarded him
handsomely.

Cipriano says that when he agreed to help Scientology destroy one of
its enemies, the church leased him a house and a car, helped finance
his nonprofit business, and paid off a debt that freed him from a
felony probation sentence. Cipriano also says his Scientology attorney
rewarded him with a job at Earthlink, the Internet provider started by
Scientologists. Berry, meanwhile, says the church's harassment has
severely hampered his ability to practice law.

But given their backgrounds, it's easy to dismiss Berry and Cipriano
when they say Scientology -- which has earned a reputation for
harassing enemies with covert operations -- is up to its old tricks.
However, it's not so easy to dismiss a pile of documents suggesting
just that.

Court filings and hundreds of pages of financial records, receipts,
letters, and e-mail printouts make a case that Cipriano was, indeed,
part of an operation by Scientology attorney Kendrick Moxon and private
investigator Eugene Ingram to harass Berry, and that Cipriano's
cooperation was richly rewarded. Records show that Moxon did lease
Cipriano a home and a car, bought him a computer, and incorporated his
nonprofit business. Earthlink officials, meanwhile, acknowledge that
they hired Cipriano after he was referred by Moxon. And Moxon did send
$20,000 to a New Jersey attorney to pay off Cipriano's felony debt.
Moxon insists that he housed Cipriano to protect him from Berry, but he
declined to reveal the source of the New Jersey payment or discuss why
he sent it.

In court documents, Berry lays out the conspiracy against him: "Moxon
and Ingram engaged in...criminal, tortious [sic] and unethical conduct,
including but not limited to blackmail, bribery, witness tampering,
subornation of perjury, and obstruction of justice...[They procured]
employment for Cipriano at Earthlink...[Offered] Cipriano approximately
$750,000 in exchange for his continued testimony consistent with the
perjurious statements set forth in his May 5, 1994 Declaration....
[Funded a nonprofit corporation] which led to Moxon using the nonprofit
entity he incorporated to 'launder money' for the personal use by
Cipriano....Moxon [also] solicited and suborned perjurious statements
by Cipriano at his deposition...[Thereafter] Moxon engaged in other
conduct that was intended to threaten and intimidate Cipriano and
otherwise dissuade him from recanting his prior perjurious testimony
and telling the truth about the activities of the Church of
Scientology."

No court has endorsed Berry's version of events, and Moxon vehemently
denies wrongdoing. He says he had no reason to disbelieve Cipriano's
allegations that Berry was a pedophile and says that he has
corroborating evidence to back up those allegations. He refused to turn
over that evidence. Asked about Cipriano's court documents, Moxon
attacked Berry and Cipriano. Berry is "psycho" and obsessed with
Scientology, Moxon says, and Cipriano has admitted to lying under oath.
Neither is credible, Moxon complains.

A convincing argument, maybe. But when Moxon was asked about the
records, he balked, refusing to answer questions about why he sent
$20,000 on Cipriano's behalf or about where the money came from.
When a writer persisted in asking the questions, Moxon threatened to
sue New Times if it printed a story about Cipriano's allegations.

It's three weeks before Christmas 1993, and the Church of Scientology,
which believes Jesus Christ is a figment of the imagination, is putting
on a gala concert in his name.

Some of Scientology's most notable celebrities are in attendance at the
Hollywood Celebrity Centre party. John Travolta and his wife, Kelly
Preston. Juliette Lewis. Isaac Hayes. And Charles Durning, who is not a
Scientologist, is dressed as Santa Claus. Heavy security separates the
VIPs from the large crowd of well-wishers milling about on the lawn of
the old mansion on Franklin Street.

In the audience is a man, his wife, and four other people who appear to
be their grown children. They joke with Durning about his Santa suit,
and the venerable actor comes by later and checks on them during one of
the intermissions. At the show's finale, the entire firmament of
Scientology stars takes the stage for a bow. Then, as the crowd
disperses, the man and his cohorts make their moves.

Slipping by security, the family suddenly whips out court summonses and
begins chasing after celebrities. Travolta bolts, but the process
server and his children manage to hand subpoenas to Preston (who
screams), Lewis, Hayes, and Durning.

The subpoenas resulted from Berry's defense of a man who had been
mentioned in a 1991 Time magazine story in which Scientology was called
a "ruthless global scam." The church was suing the man, saying that it
had been defamed. Berry argued to the court that he simply wanted to
depose the church's celebrities to see if their opinions of Scientology
had suffered because of the article. The judge asked Berry how much
time he needed with each of the celebrities. An hour, Berry responded.
The judge gave him two.

Scientology's attorneys responded by dropping the case.

Berry's brazen tactic had paid off. And it wasn't the first time. By
late 1993, he was already one of Scientology's most bitter enemies.
Berry says it didn't surprise him that after the Christmas caper,
Scientology stepped up its efforts to investigate his background.
Historically, the church has dealt with its enemies harshly. L. Ron
Hubbard encouraged his followers to go after critics with "noisy"
investigations, lawsuits, and intimidation. Although Hubbard died
nearly 14 years ago, the millions of words he left behind in books,
audiotaped lectures, and bureaucratic "policy letters" are still
considered by church members to be unalterable Scientology scripture.
An example of such church doctrine, from a 1968 manual: "The purpose of
the suit is to harass and discourage rather than to win. The law can be
used very easily to harass...if possible, of course, ruin utterly."
In a 1967 internal church bulletin, Hubbard wrote that critics of
Scientology all had criminal pasts to hide. "Over and over we prove
this. Politician A stands up on his hind legs in a Parliament and brays
for a condemnation of Scientology. When we look him over we find
crimes -- embezzled funds, moral lapses, a thirst for young boys --
sordid stuff. Wife B howls at her husband for attending a Scientology
group. We look her up and find that she had a baby he didn't know
about....If you oppose Scientology we promptly look up -- will find and
expose -- your crimes."

Throughout its nearly half a century of existence, Scientology has been
attacked by some former adherents who feed a curious press about the
organization's odd beliefs, voracious appetite for parishioners' cash,
and aggressive litigiousness. Hubbard responded to such critics by
declaring defectors "suppressive persons."

In 1967, Hubbard issued his "fair game" policy, which announced that a
suppressive person, or SP, "may be deprived of property or injured by
any means, by any Scientologist....He may be tricked, sued or lied to,
or destroyed."

Since then, former Scientologists, government officials, and
journalists have claimed to have become targets of "fair game":

---> Paulette Cooper, author of the The Scandal of Scientology (1971),
became the target of Operation Freakout, an attempt by church
operatives to either drive her insane or get her put in prison. The
operatives managed to get Cooper indicted by framing her for making
bomb threats against the church. She was only exonerated when documents
detailing Operation Freakout were discovered by government agents.

---> In Florida, Scientology made the town of Clearwater one of its two
world headquarters (the other is Los Angeles). When Clearwater Mayor
Gabe Cazares complained about the church in 1976, FBI documents show
the church launched a campaign to spread rumors about his sex life.

---> Scientology's most ambitious crusade was directed at its arch
enemy: the Internal Revenue Service. From 1957 to 1992, the IRS denied
the church tax-exempt status, saying that it was more a moneymaking
operation than a religion. In 1977, FBI agents raided the Church of
Scientology in both Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and discovered
damning evidence that, for several years, Scientology operatives in the
church's secretive Guardian's Office had been breaking into the IRS and
other federal offices in Washington and stealing government documents.
To this day, Scientology's pilfering of records, which Hubbard
designated Operation Snow White, is the single largest infiltration of
the U.S. government in history.

Despite uncovering the scheme, the FBI couldn't immediately put its
hands on Snow White's chief infiltrator, a Guardian's Office operative
named Michael Meisner. Searching for Meisner, FBI agents demanded
samples of his handwriting. But the Guardian's Office supplied the FBI
with false handwriting samples to throw agents off Meisner's trail.
According to a stipulation of evidence in the case signed by church
officials, the person who supplied the false signature samples was GO
employee Kendrick Moxon -- who today is the church attorney accused by
Robert Cipriano of masterminding the plot to destroy Graham Berry.
Eventually, 11 Scientologists, including Guardian's Office director
Mary Sue Hubbard (wife of the church founder) were sentenced to
prison. "The crimes committed by these defendants is of a breadth and
scope previously unheard," wrote U.S. Attorney Charles Ruff in a
sentencing memorandum. "It is interesting to note that the Founder of
their organization, unindicted co-conspirator L. Ron Hubbard,
wrote...that 'truth is what is true for you,' and 'illegal' is that
which is 'contrary to statistics or policy' and not pursuant to
Scientology's 'approved program.' Thus, with the Founder-Commodore's
blessings, they could wantonly commit crimes as long as it was in the
interest of Scientology....The standards of human conduct embodied in
such practices represent no less than the absolute perversion of any
known ethical value system."

Besides Hubbard himself, Kendrick Moxon and 21 others were named
unindicted co-conspirators and were not charged. (Moxon tells New Times
he didn't knowingly supply false handwriting samples and that the
stipulation of evidence was something signed by church officials but
written by FBI agents. He says the matter was thoroughly investigated
by two bar associations -- in D.C. and in California -- before they
admitted him as an attorney. Moxon is in good standing with the bar
associations in both jurisdictions.)

After the Snow White debacle, church officials insisted that the
Guardian's Office had contained "rogue elements" who broke into
government offices without the knowledge or permission of the rest of
the organization. The church has promised the IRS and said publicly
that it has purged itself of the Snow White operatives. In 1993, the
IRS granted tax-exempt status to the Church of Scientology after, among
other things, it declared that it had changed its ways.

Scientologists point out that in 1968, Hubbard issued a policy
canceling "fair game." Wrote Hubbard: "The practice of declaring people
FAIR GAME will cease. FAIR GAME may not appear on any Ethics Order. It
causes bad public relations." However, the memo's next line seemed to
indicate that while the term "fair game" would cease to be used, the
practice of fair game would not: "The [policy letter] does not cancel
any policy on the treatment or handling of an SP [Suppressive Person]."
Scientology officials have argued repeatedly that the 1968 policy
forever ended the practice of fair game, but former high-ranking
Scientologists say the 1968 policy letter was merely a PR tactic and
that the policy has never gone away.

"'Fair game' is still in effect. I don't care what they've said," says
Frank Oliver, who was, until 1993, an operative in Scientology's Office
of Special Affairs, the intelligence-gathering agency that replaced the
Guardian's Office. Oliver and other former Scientologists tell New
Times that OSA picked up where the GO left off, fair-gaming enemies on
behalf of church leaders. Oliver describes his duties with OSA: "Spy on
people. Gather intelligence. Write reports."

Oliver's last assignment before leaving Scientology was to help
Kendrick Moxon and other officials establish a special unit to target
the Cult Awareness Network (CAN). Oliver says the goal of the unit was
to recruit plaintiffs to sue CAN, which Scientology wanted to put out
of business. Moxon was intimately involved in the effort that finally
did just that.

In Oliver's opinion, there's little doubt that his former colleagues
have targeted Graham Berry.

Says Oliver: "I'm sure somebody gets their ass chewed on a daily basis
in Scientology, asked what have you done to destroy Graham Berry
today?"

Robert Cipriano contends he had no idea at first that the Church of
Scientology was using him to destroy Berry. When he signed a
declaration falsely accusing Berry of sexual acts with young boys,
Cipriano says he thought he was helping out the Los Angeles Police
Department.

During the early 1980s, Cipriano was the live-in lover of attorney
Jerome Spiegelman, who had offices on East 53rd Avenue in New York over
the gay nightclub Round. In the spring of 1984, Graham Berry took an
adjacent office, forming a law partnership with Spiegelman. For 11
months, the three shared offices and spent time at the bar downstairs
and at Studio 54, whose owners Berry represented.

In 1985, Cipriano and Spiegelman broke up, and Cipriano headed for Los
Angeles. Spiegelman headed for prison after he was convicted of
misappropriating more than $400,000 in client judgments. And Berry left
for Australia.

Several years later, Cipriano returned to New York, married, and became
successful in real estate, brokering deals for foreign firms. At one
time in the early 1990s, he says, his Cipriano Development Group took
up half a floor in a Park Avenue building and employed 35 highly paid
executives. Then in 1993, CDG's fortunes took a downturn. Things had
gone sour for a friend as well. Cipriano says the friend approached
him, asking Cipriano to absorb his ailing Atlantic City renovation
company into Cipriano Development. Cipriano agreed out of friendship,
and within months was receiving calls from Atlantic City customers
about debts the friend's company owed them. One of those creditors
talked the Atlantic County, New Jersey, prosecutor's office into
indicting Cipriano on theft charges.

Out of money in early 1994, Cipriano was forced to close his
development firm. He had no cash to pay an attorney, so he ignored
notices from Atlantic County to appear in court on the theft charges.
One of those notices informed him that a bench warrant had been issued
for his arrest.

His personal finances a mess, Cipriano somehow eked out a living in
Manhattan while, just across the river in New Jersey, he was a wanted
man.

Then, on May 4, 1994, Eugene Ingram showed up at his door. In a
declaration he signed in August, Cipriano writes that when Ingram
identified himself as a "Los Angeles police detective," he panicked,
thinking Ingram was there to drag him away.

In fact, Ingram is a private investigator who has worked for the Church
of Scientology since the early 1980s. A former LAPD officer, he was
fired in 1981 amid accusations that he had informed drug dealers of
upcoming busts and had operated a prostitution ring. He was acquitted
on the charges in a criminal trial after losing his job. Working for
Scientology, Ingram has been accused several times of misrepresenting
himself or persuading people to sign untrue declarations:

---> In his first high-profile case for Scientology, Ingram took out
full-page ads in Eastern newspapers in 1982 looking for information in
a bad-check case. Ingram then went to the press with accusations that
Boston attorney Michael Flynn had concocted a scheme to steal millions
from an L. Ron Hubbard bank account. (Flynn was litigating several
cases against Scientology at the time.) Ingram's chief piece of
evidence against Flynn was a declaration by a man named Ala Tamimi, who
said that Flynn had tried to use his brother to pass a bad check on
Hubbard's account. Former high-ranking Scientologist Stacey Brooks
tells New Times that the ads and the Tamimi declaration were all part
of a Scientology scam to ruin Flynn's reputation -- she knows because
she wrote the ads. "Ingram manufactures whatever evidence he wants,"
she says. Ultimately, Tamimi admitted in yet another court declaration
that he'd been paid by Ingram to write a declaration falsely accusing
Flynn.

---> In 1984, Ingram persuaded an LAPD officer to sign a letter
authorizing him to surreptitiously videotape or wiretap a former
Scientologist who had become a critic of the church. Chief Daryl Gates
angrily denounced Ingram, writing in a public announcement: "The Los
Angeles Police Department has not cooperated with Eugene Ingram. It
will be a cold day in hell when we do."

---> A Chicago teenager, Jonathan Nordquist, says he was convinced in
1991 to sign a misleading declaration by Ingram. Nordquist testified in
a court case that Ingram paid him $300 just for meeting him to discuss
making the declaration. "[Ingram] said, 'Now this isn't paying you for
the declaration.' He insisted it wasn't. It was just for my time. It is
the highest paying job I ever had," Nordquist testified.

---> In 1994, a warrant was issued for Ingram's arrest on charges of
impersonating an officer after he flashed a badge at a Tampa, Florida,
woman and told her he was a police detective seeking information about
a local sheriff's possible involvement in a prostitution ring.

---> In 1995, Rubye Ward, 74, says Ingram identified himself as "Jack
Hoff," saying he was a former classmate of her son, Grady. She turned
over some photographs of her son, who was an outspoken critic of
Scientology being sued by the church. Scientology officials later
admitted in court documents that Ingram had, in fact, persuaded Rubye
to turn over the photographs.

Ingram tells New Times that he did not identify himself as a police
detective to Robert Cipriano when he visited his apartment in May 1994.
Ingram insists that he handed Cipriano a business card that clearly
identified him as a private investigator and says he couldn't have
intimidated Cipriano about the New Jersey matter because he wasn't
aware of it. He says he didn't learn that Cipriano was serving a
probated sentence until years later when Cipriano mentioned the
probation himself.

Cipriano says that the improbability of an LAPD detective showing up to
drag him to face a criminal charge in New Jersey didn't really register
with him. "There was a cop at my door, and I think, 'I'm going to New
Jersey and I'm going to be arrested and I'm going straight to jail,' "
he recalls in an interview. In his August court declaration, Cipriano
claims that Ingram told him he was aware of the New Jersey matter and
told Cipriano that he should be helpful. "It was a natural presumption
for me to conclude that if I did not assist him in any [and] all
manners that he would arrest me and take me to New Jersey before I
could retain legal representation," Cipriano states.

Cipriano tells New Times that he was relieved when Ingram moved on from
the subject of his legal troubles to Spiegelman and Berry. Cipriano
assumed that Ingram was really interested in reports that Spiegelman's
clients had never retrieved all their money. But then Ingram bored in
on questions about Berry and his lifestyle.

"He started getting accusatory and sick. Homophobic. 'Did Berry like to
suck cock? Did he take it up the ass?' " Cipriano recounts in his court
declaration.

Cipriano says that he acknowledged to Ingram that Berry was gay and
that he had had numerous young -- but not underage -- male partners in
1984.

From his declaration: "Without warning, the discussion turned
domineering and combative when Mr. Ingram started to ask seriously
deranged questions. For example: 'You saw Graham Berry with underage
boys -- 12-year-olds, right?' 'Graham was a cocaine addict, right?'
and 'Graham Berry was a really sick faggot, right?' He was not
questioning me any further, yet demanding that this had happened and
that had happened. I asked him to back off and slow down."

But Cipriano says Ingram continued, asking him whether he knew if Berry
took boys to The Anvil, a Manhattan after-hours gay club. "I stated
that 'I have never gone to a place like that; I would not know if he
did or did not,' " Cipriano writes.

Cipriano says that when he said he didn't know the ages of Berry's
partners, Ingram angrily "pushed the New Jersey buttons" again.
"Now I just wanted him out of my house. But he lightened up," Cipriano
says. Ingram asked if he could write up a declaration and bring it by
the next day. Cipriano says he acquiesced just to get Ingram to leave.
Drained, Cipriano says he left the house for a drink. When he came
back, he learned that Ingram had returned to talk to his wife. "As my
wife had no part or knowledge of my lifestyle, friends, or business
associates in the early 1980s, this caused me some serious anxiety."
The next day, Ingram showed up at Cipriano's New York office. He says
the investigator had written a declaration for him to sign; it stated
that Spiegelman and Berry used large amounts of cocaine and preferred
sex with underage boys: "Mr. Berry was a classic example of a 'Chicken
Hawk,' which in street vernacular is a term for an adult male who has
sexual relations with boys under the age of 16....Mr. Berry told me
that he would sodomize these boys and have them orally copulate his
penis. Between May 1984 and February 1985 I personally observed at
least 50 to 60 boys between the ages of 14 and 16 in the company of Mr.
Berry at the law firm....I also observed a side of Mr. Berry which I
felt was even 'seedier.' He used to frequent the Anvil Club in
Greenwich Village in New York City. Homosexual males at the club would
orally copulate and sodomized each other in open view of the other
patrons. Inside the club they also practices [sic] sadistic and
masochistic sex acts upon each other, including inserting their greased
hand up the rectum of the other and placing their penis through a hole
in the wall, commonly called a 'glory hole,' where an anonymous male
would orally copulate it. Mr. Berry once told me about taking a boy of
12 years of age to the Anvil Club for the purpose of introducing him to
gay sex."

Cipriano says he balked at signing the document. "He took my basic
statements and painted a different picture than I had presented the day
before. I told him that this was not what I had said, and he
instantaneously became furious and belligerent with me again, because I
dared to challenge him on the ages of the males involved with Mr.
Berry. He said, 'The next time you open your door at home it is not
going to be me, but New Jersey. Now sign it.' "

Finally, Cipriano signed the declaration. He says Ingram told him the
document would be filed with the LAPD and would probably never be used.
"We [Berry, Spiegelman, and Cipriano] did the drugs," Cipriano says
today, "but the other statements were distortions. This is not what I
said."

Jerome Spiegelman, who was also approached by Ingram, tells New
Times: "There was very little in [Cipriano's 1994 declaration] that was
true....It's nonsense. Absolute, total nonsense." Spiegelmen
acknowledges that young men did work for Berry, but he says they were
not underage boys. "There were some guys working there who were in
their early 20s....[Ingram] asked me if Graham took out people who were
14 to 15. I said, 'Don't be stupid.' "

Spiegelman says he never went to The Anvil and never knew Berry to go
there. "Those were heavy-duty places. Graham wasn't into that kind of
thing....Graham is not a pedophile. He likes young attractive guys, but
that doesn't mean age 13, 14, 15. I have never seen him with anybody
underage, and he's never spoken about underage boys," Spiegelman
says. "If, today, Cipriano is saying he didn't see Graham with 14-year-
olds, then he's telling the truth."

Cipriano says he regrets signing the false declaration five years ago
but that it seemed the only way to get rid of Ingram. "I was afraid he
was going to turn me in to authorities in New Jersey. I was also
physically afraid of him. I really had no feelings one way or the other
about Graham Berry."

As it turned out, Cipriano had little to fear when he eventually
crossed the Hudson River and faced New Jersey authorities. He pleaded
guilty to "Failure of Required Disposition" and was sentenced to
probation. His probation would end when he paid off the $24,500 debt to
the creditors in the criminal case, which he was ordered to do at $750
a month. A year later, he had brought the debt down to $18,500 but
again ran out of money. He moved back to the L.A. area and ceased
making payments on the debt. He temporarily forgot about Ingram, Berry,
and the declaration.

Then, one day in 1997, he purchased an America Online account and
logged on to the World Wide Web for the first time. Succumbing to a
common form of vanity, he entered his own name in a search engine.
What came up mortified him.

Imagine the Roman Catholic church withholding the contents of the Book
of Genesis from 90 percent of its 900 million worldwide adherents.
That's 810 million Catholics kept in the dark about "Let there be
light," Adam and Eve, and the rest of the Christian origin saga. And
imagine that the Catholic church called Genesis a "trade secret" that
could only be revealed to Catholics who had spent years, and hundreds
of thousands of dollars, obtaining the correct level of experience to
be allowed to read their own religion's version of how the universe
started and where people came from.

Now imagine the wrath this fictitious Catholic church would feel for an
infidel who made that expensive and closely guarded Book of Genesis
available so that just about anyone -- believer and nonbeliever alike --
could look at it without paying a dime.

Comparable is the case of Scientology and Graham Berry.

In 1993, Berry was defending psychiatrist Uwe Geertz. Scientology was
suing Geertz and his patient Steven Fishman for telling Time that
Fishman had been committing crimes on the church's orders and had been
told to kill Geertz and then commit "EOC" or "end of cycle," which
Fishman said was church jargon for suicide. In its defamation lawsuit
against Fishman, the church said that his claims were nonsense and
described him as someone who had barely had any involvement in
Scientology.

Although Fishman represented himself in his defense, he and Berry
discussed the best way for Fishman to prove that he had actually had
extensive involvement in Scientology. What better way than to file
copies of secret, high-level Scientology materials in the court file?
Fishman's mere possession of them would suggest that he had spent years
in the religion.

So in May 1993, Fishman quietly filed Scientology's secret origin
story -- its Book of Genesis, as it were -- in a court declaration.
By that time, descriptions of Scientology's core beliefs had been
leaking out in press reports for several years. But except for the
small percentage of church adherents who had attained the level of OT
III, few people had access to the actual materials.

Scientology is based partly on Hubbard's 1950 book Dianetics. The self-
help tome was described at the time of its publication as a sort of
poor-man's psychoanalysis and was promoted by Hubbard as an alternative
to traditional mental-health care. Through a process vaguely similar to
psychotherapy, which he called auditing, Hubbard claimed that the
unhappy could improve their lives by erasing the effects of traumatic
memories. Hubbard called these memories engrams and said they acted
like scars on the mind; only after extensive auditing and the removal
of all engrams, including those leftover from past lives, could a
person achieve a new state of inner freedom. Hubbard said such an
engram-free human being would be known as a clear.

New church members work toward becoming clears by attending
increasingly expensive classes and auditing sessions. Critics estimate
the total cost of the journey to be about $200,000. Once a clear, a
Scientologist is also known as an "operating thetan," or OT. (This
means the person has the ability to communicate with his or her thetan,
an entity somewhat analogous to a soul.) Members then continue their
spiritual journey, moving to levels such as OT II and OT III and up to
OT VIII, the highest current level attainable.

It's at OT III (a step that alone costs more than $8,000 to attain,
according to a recent church price list) that Scientologists are
finally told the story of the origin of their religion. In OT III,
Hubbard reveals that 75 million years ago, a galactic overlord named
Xenu (sometimes called Xemu) wanted to take care of an overpopulation
problem. So he had billions of people from 76 different planets
paralyzed with an alcohol and glycol mixture, put them into spaceships,
and transported them to Teegeeack (now Earth). Xenu placed the
paralyzed billions around volcanoes and then put hydrogen bombs into
the craters to blow everyone up. The thetans of all those pulverized
people were then trapped, and within them were implanted false
memories. (Jesus was such an implanted memory.) They were then bundled
together and ultimately placed inside unsuspecting human beings. Today,
everyone unwittingly carries around plenty of these "body thetans,"
which generally make people miserable and hold them back from achieving
their full potential. The higher OT materials contain auditing methods
that are reputed to remove such damaging thetans.

According to church spokeswoman Karin Pouw, only about 10 percent of
Scientologists have attained OT III. Because she's in the majority of
members who haven't reached that level, she couldn't talk about OT III
to New Times. Pouw became angry at questions about the church's
theology: "So what if we believe Jesus is a figment of the
imagination?"

A former Scientologist explains his reaction to reading the OT III
story for the first time: "Everything is done on such a gradient in
Scientology; they don't mention past lives in the beginning. The
incremental indoctrination prepares you for the Xemu story."

Former scientologists say the church is careful to prevent newer church
members from seeing the OT III materials -- revealing the Xenu story
too early to believers, they maintain, would only encourage many
parishioners to leave.

But thanks to Graham Berry and Steven Fishman, the tale was put in a
Florida federal court file in May 1993.

"The church has always accused me of -- or credited me with -- the
filing of the Fishman declaration. It represented the unplugging of the
genie," Berry says. "I expected Scientology to rush in to court to
prevent it. But nothing happened for six months. Then the church woke
up, realized what had happened, and then sought unsuccessfully to have
[the files] sealed."

Before long, copies of the OT materials were proliferating like body
thetans all over the Internet. Scientology howled "copyright
infringement" and began a long battle with computer users who had seen
Berry and Fishman's court filing and disseminated the OT materials.
Dozens of high-profile lawsuits resulted.

A few months after the filing of the Fishman declaration, Berry says he
became aware that Eugene Ingram and other private investigators were
stepping up interviews of his colleagues and former clients.
Ingram admits he was dispatched to find everyone who could provide
information about the attorney. And in May 1994, he followed his leads
to the Manhattan apartment of Robert Cipriano.

What Robert Cipriano learned when he entered his name into that search
engine in 1997 was that he had become ordnance in the arsenal that
Scientology was using in its war with Graham Berry.

The 1994 declaration he had reluctantly provided Eugene Ingram (the one
that was supposed to be on file with the LAPD, probably never to be
used) was cited practically every time his name came up and always in
conjunction with statements about the Church of Scientology. Cipriano,
who claims he had barely heard of Scientology at the time, says Ingram
had never mentioned the church.

"Holy shit!" Cipriano says. "It implicated me living in the gay world,
and it was all over the Internet."

Cipriano demanded to see Ingram right away. Cipriano says it was only
at that meeting at the Warehouse Restaurant in Marina del Rey, three
years after their first session in New York, that Ingram admitted he
was a private investigator, not an LAPD detective, and that he worked
for a law firm that wanted to know everything it could about Graham
Berry. Cipriano says Ingram mentioned that he was aware of a new
warrant that had been issued in New Jersey for Cipriano's arrest
because he had stopped making payments on his debt.

"That shut me down again," Cipriano says.

At a subsequent meeting, Ingram told Cipriano that Berry might sue him
for the 1994 declaration. "Ingram told me that he worked for the Church
of Scientology and a law firm that represented the Church of
Scientology. Mr. Ingram told me that Mr. Berry was representing
numerous people who did not like the Church of Scientology."
Cipriano tells New Times that at one point he asked Ingram if he were a
Scientologist. He says Ingram replied: "Never in a million years."
Ingram then introduced him to Kendrick Moxon, who met them in lobby of
a Glendale office building. According to the August declaration, Moxon
said that he would represent Cipriano at no cost if Berry decided to
sue.

Moxon says he has no idea how Cipriano's 1994 declaration ended up on
the Internet. He denies that Scientology put it there and suggests that
Berry disseminated it himself to create a controversy.

Berry did file suit against Cipriano in March 1998. Eventually, after
the two had corresponded by e-mail, Berry offered to settle the matter
for $1,000, writing that "this opening offer is so generous, it will
not be repeated and may be withdrawn at any time -- especially when I
ascertain your income, assets, and expectations." Berry says now he
suspected Cipriano had been coerced into making the 1994 declaration
and was merely trying to draw him out.

Cipriano sent back a short e-mail reply: "Why are you doing this? You
know what the truth is, and you know what I said was accurate. I am not
a person to push around anymore like I was in the early eighties."
Those words are proof, Kendrick Moxon insists, that Cipriano was always
telling the truth about his claims of Berry's pedophilia.

But Cipriano counters that it's proof of just the opposite -- that he
continued to tell lies about Graham Berry.

Cipriano says he was interested in settling things with Berry, so he
wrote a letter to him and gave it to his attorney, Moxon, to forward.
Berry and Cipriano say the letter never got beyond Moxon. Berry says he
had no idea that Cipriano wanted to settle. Instead, the two sides
prepared for war.

In his August declaration, Cipriano describes wavering in his resolve.
At one point, he wanted to involve police in the dispute between the
two sides. But Moxon and Ingram, he writes, "worked on" him, asking
Cipriano what he wanted in return for staying the course.

Cipriano says Moxon then began a program to make Cipriano a more
formidable court combatant. Out of work at the time, Cipriano still had
the New Jersey felony debt hanging over him, and his girlfriend was
skeptical about Scientology. Cipriano says Moxon knew Berry would try
to take advantage of weaknesses in court.

First, Cipriano needed a steady job.

Cipriano says that Moxon arranged for him to work at Earthlink, the
major Internet service provider started by Scientologist wunderkind Sky
Dayton in 1994. In its early days, Earthlink's employees and the
majority of its subscribers were Scientologists. But today the company
serves more than a million customers, and Scientologists have less
presence on its staff.

Cipriano says Moxon seemed to have unusual pull at the company. After
Moxon's recommendation, Cipriano says Earthlink employee George
Williams took him to the company's human resources department and told
a woman there to hire him. Seemingly stunned, the woman said they had
no jobs at the time in dial-up sales. "'Who the hell do you know in the
company?' she asked me. I said something about Kendrick Moxon being my
attorney, and she said, 'Oh, that explains it.' " Cipriano worked at
Earthlink for little more than a month.

Earthlink's George Williams acknowledges that Cipriano was referred by
Moxon. "Rick Moxon did refer him to our company, but that's not
unusual," he says. Williams says he's shocked that Cipriano would
suggest he was hired as a favor to Moxon. "That statement is false. I
interviewed [Cipriano] myself. He had a very impressive list of
accomplishments....Cipriano brought in five letters of recommendation,
and he probably had the most impressive series of résumés that I've
ever seen."

In June 1998, Cipriano says Moxon moved him into a Scientology
boardinghouse to get him away from his meddling girlfriend. Moxon also
began preparing him for a deposition that was scheduled for July. "Mr.
Moxon told me to lie about the ages of Mr. Berry's intimate
relationships....Mr. Moxon told me to get Mr. Berry 'pissed off' at the
deposition. It appeared to me that this was a game for Mr. Moxon, and
it was more about scaring Mr. Berry than about a real cause of action
based on truthful facts," Cipriano states in his August declaration.
Moxon denies that he encouraged Cipriano to do anything other than tell
the truth: "I believed Cipriano's [1994] declaration to be accurate
when he came to me and told me he was being sued by Berry and affirmed
the accuracy of the declaration; I believed him when he affirmed it
under oath in his deposition; I believed him when he affirmed it in an
e-mail to Berry; I continue to believe in its accuracy based on
corroborating evidence I have received."

In a new declaration Cipriano signed in September 1999, he writes: "It
was my understanding from Mr. Ingram and now Mr. Moxon that they wanted
a fabricated story about Mr. Berry, and they were willing to do
anything, including pay me, for it to get it. This was what they called
fair game....As the months past [sic], I met with Mr. Moxon almost
weekly and Mr. Ingram every couple months. Both of them repeated [sic]
told me of their plans to destroy Mr. Berry."

Cipriano says Moxon and Ingram filled him in on the rest of their
harassment campaign against Berry. In his September declaration, he
reports that Ingram and Moxon told him that flyers calling Berry a
child molester had been posted in his neighborhood; investigators had
gone through Berry's trash looking for things "that might hurt him";
complaints about Berry had been sent to the California Bar Association;
Berry was under 24-hour surveillance; operatives were posted at Berry's
favorite restaurants and bars; physicians were solicited for
information on Berry; friends, business associates, former clients,
bank officials, and other attorneys were fed damning information about
Berry to poison his relationships with them; and legal proceedings were
filed to grind Berry "into the ground financially."

Meanwhile, Cipriano alleges that Moxon had a plan for improving his
finances. Cipriano says Moxon gave him tours of an L. Ron Hubbard
museum and took him by the Hollywood Celebrity Center. There, Cipriano
says, Moxon offered him $750,000. "I said I did not want to be paid for
my testimony," Cipriano states in the August declaration. Moxon denies
that he made the offer. Cipriano says he mentioned to Moxon that he'd
long had a dream of putting on a 24-hour worldwide charity concert to
benefit children's groups, which he called "Day of the Child."

"Moxon told me, in plain words, that he would syndicate the monies
needed with some of the wealthy Scientologists and get it funded,"
Cipriano writes in his declaration. Besides incorporating his "Day of
the Child" company for him, Cipriano writes that Moxon also helped him
out with his debts. And he attaches a document to show that a man named
Geoffrey Barton lent Cipriano $2,500. Cipriano writes that Moxon
arranged for the man to send the money so Cipriano could pay off
obligations he owed his girlfriend. "Moxon stated that we needed to
sign a promissory note so that it did not look like Scientology was
paying me while I was a witness."

In July 1998, Cipriano sat for his deposition and reiterated what he
had said in his 1994 declaration. Cipriano now claims in declarations
filed in 1999 that he lied under oath, saying things about Berry that
he knew were not true.

After the deposition, Cipriano moved to Palm Springs, where Moxon
personally leased a condominium and a Saturn automobile for Cipriano's
use. Cipriano turned over copies of the lease papers to New Times.
Cipriano claims in his August declaration that Moxon also told him that
a source of funds to pay off Cipriano's debt in New Jersey had been
found.

The $20,000 was sent to a New Jersey attorney who settled Cipriano's
debt to end his probation. Moxon refuses to identify the source of the
funds and points out that although Cipriano has fired him, the
information remains subject to attorney-client privilege.

After the settling of the debt, some of that money was left over, and
Cipriano had the New Jersey attorney deposit it into his "Day of the
Child" nonprofit business, which Moxon had gotten incorporated. Other
money for the project was coming in from prominent Scientologists -- a
canceled check shows that Los Angeles art dealer Isadore Chait
contributed $1,000. Chait did not return phone calls asking for
comment.

When New Times asked Moxon about Cipriano's allegations, he responded
by denigrating Graham Berry and sending over a packet of documents that
described Berry's numerous court sanctions. Moxon said Cipriano's
August declaration was actually Berry's doing and that given the
chance, Cipriano wouldn't back up that declaration's allegations. "The
[August] declaration is peppered with false statements. You will never
get Cipriano to affirm the contents of the declaration under oath -- he
knows it is full of lies," Moxon wrote in a letter to New Times. When
he was told that New Times had already spoken to Cipriano, who had
repeated verbally what he had written and had turned over voluminous
records to back up his version of events, Moxon started questioning a
New Times writer about his motives. Repeatedly asked to talk about
whether he had leased Cipriano a car and a house and had paid off his
felony debt, Moxon instead questioned whether New Times had paid anyone
for information for this story. (It hasn't.)

Cipriano says Scientology's various lines of support began to end when,
in February 1999, Berry dropped his lawsuit. "When that happened, Moxon
dismissed me," Cipriano says. Moxon stopped paying his bills, and other
Scientologists stopped helping him out with his nonprofit business.
Cipriano says he gradually realized that his Day of the Child was
getting nowhere and that Scientology's interest in him was waning.
In July, he gave Graham Berry a call.

A month later, Cipriano signed a new declaration announcing that he'd
been an unwitting pawn in a nefarious plot by Scientologists to target
Berry.

But both Berry and Cipriano say Cipriano's defection hasn't sated the
church's hunger to destroy its enemy.

Berry claims that Moxon and other church attorneys have only used his
lawsuit against Cipriano -- now dropped -- as another way to fair game
him even further.

During a deposition in November 1998, for example, a Scientology
attorney learned that Berry had provided free legal work to a young gay
man whom Berry had slept with. Two months later, Eugene Ingram was
dispatched to tell the man, Michael Hurtado, what Berry had said under
oath.

Berry admits that he once had a short relationship with Hurtado, and
that when Hurtado was arrested for violating a domestic restraining
order, Berry agreed to represent him free of charge.

Four months after Berry divulged their relationship publicly, Hurtado
filed suit asking for $9 million in damages, claiming that Berry forced
him to have sex four times as compensation for the legal
representation. In the suit, Hurtado alleges that he's not gay and that
Berry forced him to have his first homosexual experience. Hurtado did
not return phone calls from New Times.

Berry, in a counterclaim, asserts that Hurtado is a homosexual
prostitute who doesn't want his Latino family to know that he's gay.
Rather than admit to his relationship with Berry, Hurtado is suing to
convince his family that he was raped, Berry claims. Also in the
counterclaim, Berry indicates he has found a man willing to testify in
court that Hurtado was known in the gay community as a prostitute. The
man tells New Times he knows Hurtado is a hustler because the two of
them were once hired to perform in a threesome.

Currently, Hurtado's attorney is trying to convince a judge that Berry
filed bankruptcy recently so that he could avoid paying Hurtado and has
asked that Berry's insurance carrier pay $700,000 even before the case
has gone to trial.

Hurtado's attorney is Kendrick Moxon.

Moxon refused to answer New Times' questions about how he had become
Hurtado's attorney.

Besides filing bankruptcy, Berry says he's been forced from several law
firms since he became prominent in anti-Scientology litigation, and he
claims that his own practice is now a shambles. He claims he's giving
up litigating against the church. If the Church of Scientology has set
out to destroy him, he says, it has succeeded.

But even his admirers say Berry's over-the-top strategies have been as
much to blame for his downfall as Moxon and Scientology.

If at one time Berry's bold strategies scored him significant
victories, his flair for the dramatic has worn thin with judges.
In August, L.A. Superior Court Judge Alexander H. Williams III declared
Berry a vexatious litigant, a harsh and rare penalty meted out to
attorneys who tie up courts with frivolous lawsuits.

Williams chided Berry for turning in needlessly voluminous filings and
turning them in late.

Berry is appealing the ruling. He notes that Williams didn't reveal
until well into Berry's 1998 lawsuit against Cipriano that Williams'
fiancé works for the Church of Scientology as a translator and that his
clerk worked for one of the law firms representing Scientology
entities.

Berry also says it's outrageous that Moxon and other attorneys hired by
Scientology -- such as L.A. Police Commission President Gerald Chaleff -
- argued to Williams that Berry has clogged the court with conspiracy
theories, when Moxon's own former client, Robert Cipriano, has come
forward with evidence that the conspiracies really exist.

Judge Williams, bemoaning the "bizarre evolution of the relationship
between Mr. Berry and Mr. Cipriano," decided Berry's point is
irrelevant to the question of whether Berry has been a legal pain in
the ass.

Even Cipriano has had second thoughts about Berry. Complaining that
he's sick of being used by both sides, Cipriano says he's leaving the
country to get away from Berry and the Church of Scientology's private
investigators.

Other people who battle the church say it's a shame that Berry has been
brought so low. But some wonder if Berry's legal and personal
predicaments only take away from the significance of Robert Cipriano's
stunning allegations, and they wonder if Cipriano's claims that the
church is up to its old tricks will get the attention it deserves.
Says one attorney who litigates against the church: "The Cipriano
declaration is a potentially fatal stab to the heart of Scientology.
But, in the hands of Graham Berry, I wonder if it will be used as
effectively as it could be."